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What Is the Story Behind the Ferrari and Norwood?

The Man, The Myth, The Legend, Bob Norwood, has been building, racing, restoring and servicing vintage/race Ferraris and other vehicles for over fifty years. He’s known for incorporating innovative developments into high-performance automotive design.

His passion for automobiles started at a young age. At 13, he drove a 1946 Ford Coupe in his first competitive drag race. He continued drag racing while in high school, driving a six cylinder GMC G-Gas Coupe and later an A-Sports Corvette. In 1971, he raced a Superstock Hemi-Cuda and made it number two in the world A/FC point standings.

Norwood got into Cam AM racing in 1982 with the purchase of the 1979 Citi-Corp Championship car from Carl Hass. He ran SCCA A-Sports with driver Phil Compton and continued on in 1983 with the addition of a second Lola 333 driven by Mike Rowe. The Norwood team partnered with Don Walker in late 1983, bought Team VDS and won Cam AM in 1984. At one point he was the proud owner of 137 listings in the Guinness Book of Automotive World Records.

In the mid ’80s, Bob’s modified Ferrari 308 QV, the first with programmable fuel injection, set two class speed records on the Bonneville Salt Flats and one of them stood for 26 years.

His Ferrari 288 GTO rebody still holds the record as the fastest Ferrari in the world and his intercooled twin turbo Ferrari Testarossa won a Road & Track Magazine Shootout.

In the late ’80s, Norwood equipped a Ferrari 12-cylinder Boxer engine with a locomotive sourced supercharger. It featured a lightened flywheel and knife-edged crank and could rev from the engine’s 1200 RPM idle to the 9,000 RPM redline in just over a tenth of a second. It was certified on a Superflow 901 engine dyno to make 1,400 horsepower on 120-octane gasoline at 60 psi boost.

The short-stroke 3.2-inch bore engine was upgraded with a billet Crower crankshaft, extra-long Crower rods and custom forged pistons. It was managed by a Haltech F3 EFI controller and a Firepower Direct-Fire 12 coil ignition system. Fast forward to today and he is making (including the engine block and heads) custom 5.0 liter 4 cylinder engines from scratch that produce 3,000+ horsepower!

Drawing on his racing background and passion for Ferraris, Norwood’s first Ferrari restoration projects were a 330 2+2 road car and a Boano club racer. He then built his first Ferrari replica, a 59/TR (Testarossa), and went on to build four more. He has since built numerous Ferrari replicas, including the 330/P4. After years of building P4 replicas, GTO rebodies, and 250 Testrossa 59s, he decided to build rebodied Ferrari 250 GT SWB Spyders (scroll down to learn more about these and his 330 P/4s).

In addition to his own projects, he builds race and street motors for several racing teams and is one of the leading service and restoration providers for Ferrari owners/collectors around the world.